Last week, I went to the doctor's office. I had Ben with me and was waiting for the doctor when my phone rang. It was a real estate agent I wanted to talk to about selling our house. I scrambled around the doctor's office trying to find a writing implement. I searched all the drawers and under the sink - nothing to write with. So, I couldn't write down the guy's phone number.
After the doctor came in and talked with me for a while, Benjamin spoke up, "Um, Doctor, my Dad needs something to write with." The doctor was impressed and gave him a lollypop.
Walking May home from school the other day, her friend, Andrew, came running behind us and from about a half a block away was calling her name. May ran over to him and gave him a hug. When she came back she told me, "Andrew and I are on the Listening Side of the Class." She then listed the other kids in her class who were "Listeners." It was a short list.
I'm all faklempt about leaving Jersey today. I've been trying to drown my sorrows in Anime. I've come across a pretty good show, "Mezzo." In short, a girl, a punk rocker, and a lightly older guy ("Pops") are assassin-detective-rockstars. I'm sure that when I say "assassin-detective-rockstar" great volumes of images are generated in your head. Good.
In the episode I watched tonight, the older of the main characters has the following to say after they begin to uncover the latest plot: "I knew something bad was happening here. You could smell it in the air; like cookies; evil cookies." I laughed out loud, told Jill about it, and then wrote this blog entry.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
On Tues, I picked El Destructo up from school, and his teacher had something funny to say. "Benjamin had this cup," a Dunkin Donuts paper coffee cup, "and he insisted he had brought it from home. He's been carrying it around all day and drinks from it. I took it away from him on the condition that he be allowed to bring it home."
"I don't remember him having that cup, but..." I shrugged.
On the way home, he tells me, "I found that cup in the hallway at school. When we get home, can I drink sink water from it?"
"Sure."
On Monday, when I picked up May from kindergarten, I asked her, "Did you get a new book from reading class?"
"Yes. It's a book about animals. It's non-fiction."
Then, on the way home, a boy who lives down the street from us and his mother were behind us on the sidewalk. May turns her head and shouts at this boy, "Dominick! Your cat pees on our porch! You need to make him stop!"
A few problems with this embarrassing truth:
1) It need not have been shouted such that everyone on the block hears it
2) On cat peeing is not a problem, yet it has incited our cat to mark his porch not infrequently
3) She kept repeating it over and over until...
"I know." Says Dominick.
"Well, what are you going to do about it!" Demands my daughter - insisting on a total surrender.
"We'll just have to try to keep the cat inside from now on." Dominick's mother replied.
"I don't remember him having that cup, but..." I shrugged.
On the way home, he tells me, "I found that cup in the hallway at school. When we get home, can I drink sink water from it?"
"Sure."
On Monday, when I picked up May from kindergarten, I asked her, "Did you get a new book from reading class?"
"Yes. It's a book about animals. It's non-fiction."
Then, on the way home, a boy who lives down the street from us and his mother were behind us on the sidewalk. May turns her head and shouts at this boy, "Dominick! Your cat pees on our porch! You need to make him stop!"
A few problems with this embarrassing truth:
1) It need not have been shouted such that everyone on the block hears it
2) On cat peeing is not a problem, yet it has incited our cat to mark his porch not infrequently
3) She kept repeating it over and over until...
"I know." Says Dominick.
"Well, what are you going to do about it!" Demands my daughter - insisting on a total surrender.
"We'll just have to try to keep the cat inside from now on." Dominick's mother replied.
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Today I wanted to go to some lectures on toxicology - I was the only one who showed up. As I rarely give a lecture for which I am unprepared to an empty room, I took the subway back to the main campus to spend some time goofing off on the computer. My broken arm is feeling better and I get my cast off in ten days, the day after the match. It's still awkward and frustrating to type (the cast constantly bumps into the Ctrl and Alt keys). In spite of the chaos of the unanticipated computer commands, a true artist soldiers on.
News of the kids:
El Destructo has discovered the sandwich. Previously, he subsisted entirely on a diet of processed meat, frosting, and cold pizza. On Sunday, there was a cold cut spread at church and he asked me to make him a ham and cheese sandwich - which he ate! Now, as long as processed meat is wrapped in the middle, he will heat bread! He came running up the stairs as I was shaving to show me his breakfast this morning, "Look Daddy! A bologna-sandwich-toast!"
May still hates getting her hair washed. I've told her again and again, "When water gets in your eyes, wipe it away." No dice. The other day, it was time for her to take a bath, and I suggested they would get their hair washed. The kids are used to getting their hair washed every other bath/shower, and a bath/shower every other day. May screamed at me, "DAD, WE JUST HAD OUR HAIR WASHED YESTERDAY! WE SHOULD NOT BE GETTING OUR HAIR WASHED AGAIN!" A tiny purple vein at the base of her neck leaped and pulsed with every forceful shout. I'm used to evaluating the discourse of my children with skepticism, but how could one deny the pulsing vein? Later, May's story was corroborated by my wife.
Both kids have been excited about the possibility of moving after the match. They've been "packing" off and on. May told us, "If we move to Chicago or Wisconsin, that would be great. If we stay at our house in New Jersey, that would be great. I'm excited for either!"
Monday, March 01, 2010
Please enjoy a guest blog-entry from my mom, Nancy. The title is Thanksgiving 2006.
_______________________
“I’ll never cook Thanksgiving Dinner for the whole family,” my daughter said after a observing me making dinner.
“Me either,” my daughter-in-law agreed.
“I like cooking Thanksgiving Dinner,” I replied. This was a few years ago. Both my daughter and daughter-in-law are college-trained-this-generation women’s lib. Time will change that.
Thanksgiving Dinner is a glorious hassle. I love it. You cook the rutabaga for the mash potatoes the day before, and you cut onions until your tears flow freely. Some want dressing with giblets. Some think giblets are gross. I owe my most famous creation to Martha Stewart. According to her, root vegetables add zing to gravy.
The year Martha communicated this I’d been given a plethora of a root vegetable. I’m not sure whether the beets improved the taste, but everyone remembers the year I served pink gravy.
Of all my memorial dinners, the hernia operation Thanksgiving is a pinnacle. I flew to Philadelphia ten days early in November of 2006 to watch my grandchildren ages three and six months during my son’s operation. My granddaughter’s third birthday fell on Thanksgiving Day. There was a school party for three year olds and their parents, and a friend’s party for three couples and their seven offspring in addition to Thanksgiving.
My son picked me up at the airport at mid-night the day before his operation.
“I’ve got a five hour exam in four days. I’m not going to talk to you,” my son announced.
“You scheduled your operation four days before a five hour exam? I know you need this operation but can’t you postpone the exam?” I asked.
“No, I’d have to repeat the course.”
“Will they do anything to accommodate you?”
“I can put my feet up on a chair,” he replied. My son was thirty with a wife and two children, and this was his first semester in medical school. He’d quit his job and sold their house in Wisconsin. There was no turning back.
“I appreciate your coming, Mother. I hope you can do this,” he said grimly.
The next day my son and daughter-in-law left at 7:00 am. I strolled my grandchildren to my granddaughter’s preschool and picked her up at 11:00 am. I was confident.
“They haven’t been able to fit Sam into surgery yet,” my daughter-in-law said when she called. Delays happen. It was a new relatively simple laser surgery. He would return home at 3:00 pm the same day, but after several calls, it looked like they would be gone longer than expected.
I’d brought books and toys. We read. We played. I gave my granddaughter her birthday present. I put my grandson to bed for a nap. We took walks, and we watched movies. I made peanut butter sandwiches and warmed baby bottles.
“Your son is ready to be released, but we can’t find his wife,” the hospital called at 6:30 pm. Jill hadn’t run out on him. She’d gone to eat after waiting all day, but my grandchildren hadn’t seen me for months. I was a stranger, and they were getting cranky. I loaded them into a double stroller and took them outside for the forth time. It was dark. I became mildly confused. Which house was it?
My son and daughter-in-law had recently moved to New Jersey not far from my son’s medical school in Philadelphia, an old fashioned small town much cheaper than Philadelphia. The town houses were architecturally coordinated, individually owned duplexes with shared driveways, trees, gardens, and yards. The town was charming, but in the dark all the houses looked the same, and their new address slipped my mind.
At seven pm, my daughter-in-law drove by. “Are you lost? Sam is home. He’s fine. I have to pick up his medication,” she said. She took the baby. Reoriented I took my granddaughter home.
“Your Dad is home. You’ll see him soon,” I said. May was elated. She ran inside crawled into her father’s bed and threw up on him and the bed. Agile for post-surgery, my son changed the sheets and washed his hands and May’s hands--- a prime directive in medical school.
May threw up every two hours all night and the next day. The next day my daughter-in-law got the stomach flu, and then I got it. Each of us threw up every two hours. I don’t know about baby Ben. He didn’t throw up, but he woke up five times every night, and my bed was in his room. We took turns comforting Ben.
My son didn’t have time for stomach flu. Perhaps the antibiotics helped.
“Maybe we should cancel Thanksgiving dinner,” I said to my daughter-in-law.
“Oh no, it will be fine,” she replied.
“I’m going to the library to study. I can’t stand this chaos,” my son said.
“Good,” my daughter-in-law and I chorused. He’d been notably glum. His post operative care was a disappointment. At Thanksgiving with two babies, hovering over the patient was improbable even before the stomach flu. As he slumped in to make lunch, we tried not to trample him
“Aren’t you supposed to stop lifting after a hernia operation?” I asked my son as he picked up the baby.
“They don’t say that anymore, and I don’t have a choice,” he replied.
In 2006, my daughter worked at a museum in NYC. She was to arrive five days before Thanksgiving with my ex-husband, but there was a delay. In NYC my ex-husband had emergency angioplasty, a balloon inserted in a vein, and the stomach flu. My daughter couldn’t leave without him.
Back in New Jersey, we sped through parties, and my son took the exam finishing in four and a half hours. We toured the library, the farmer’s market, and the children’s museum. At the children’s museum, I raced for an hour through a child shrieking labyrinth stopping only for a second to envy the lounging python. Invoking glares as I grabbed at someone else’s blond three year old child. Both children cried when we left.
“It’s time to go, May,” my son said quietly.
“Just five more minutes, five more minutes,” May said as tears rolled down her face.
“OK, five more minutes,” my son said. I wasn’t consulted, and we’d left Jill for an hour of peaceful cleaning.
On the day before Thanksgiving, my son picked up his sister and their Dad at the Philadelphia Chinatown bus. Under stress, he failed to observe an auto as he pulled out of his parking space. Crash, boom, not tragedy, a minor scratch, no one was injured. They exchanged information without official intervention. The only addition to our Thanksgiving dinner was that the mother of the driver called my son three times on Thanksgiving Day. “Do you have insurance? Are you sure you have insurance?” she said.
“It was the other driver’s fault,” his Dad opined.
My son’s house was small, so his Dad was to sleep in a relative’s apartment thirty minutes away. They arrived at 9:00 pm. My ex-husband looked like an escapee from an institution. His shirttails were half-out, his collar askew. He was rumpled, dirty, and couldn’t sit straight.
“I don’t think you can drive him anywhere, and he looks bad,” I said.
“You’re right, Mom. I don’t want to drive. He’ll have to stay here,” my son said.
“You’ll sleep here tonight, Dad,” my son reported.
“Good,” my ex-husband replied, and he crawled upstairs into the only double bed. Everybody else scrunched together.
On the morning of Thanksgiving Day, we discovered May’s birthday cake was missing. My daughter-in-law left to find a cake.
May has friends, and the doorbell rang with tribute all day. Piles of toys scattered everywhere. She couldn’t unwrap all her presents in one day.
“I will make quite an impression in this,” my granddaughter said holding up a new dress.
“No food fights, Ben,” I said as my grandson hurled grapes and mash potatoes.
The law practice in Wisconsin was beginning to seem relaxing. Bedtime for me was 8:00 pm, and I was taking naps with my grandson.
The day before I left I decided to make a difference. Every sheet in the house was an emblem of the stomach flu, and the clothes had gone astray while we partied and company came and went. I searched for clothes and did seven loads of laundry.
As I folded the last batch, my son said, “Is that it, Mother? Did you do it all?”
“Possibly,” I replied.
“That’s what drives me crazy about you. That’s a yes or no answer,” he said.
How was Thanksgiving Dinner? What did we eat? Dinner was great. I’m traditional. Fill in the blanks.
_______________________
“I’ll never cook Thanksgiving Dinner for the whole family,” my daughter said after a observing me making dinner.
“Me either,” my daughter-in-law agreed.
“I like cooking Thanksgiving Dinner,” I replied. This was a few years ago. Both my daughter and daughter-in-law are college-trained-this-generation women’s lib. Time will change that.
Thanksgiving Dinner is a glorious hassle. I love it. You cook the rutabaga for the mash potatoes the day before, and you cut onions until your tears flow freely. Some want dressing with giblets. Some think giblets are gross. I owe my most famous creation to Martha Stewart. According to her, root vegetables add zing to gravy.
The year Martha communicated this I’d been given a plethora of a root vegetable. I’m not sure whether the beets improved the taste, but everyone remembers the year I served pink gravy.
Of all my memorial dinners, the hernia operation Thanksgiving is a pinnacle. I flew to Philadelphia ten days early in November of 2006 to watch my grandchildren ages three and six months during my son’s operation. My granddaughter’s third birthday fell on Thanksgiving Day. There was a school party for three year olds and their parents, and a friend’s party for three couples and their seven offspring in addition to Thanksgiving.
My son picked me up at the airport at mid-night the day before his operation.
“I’ve got a five hour exam in four days. I’m not going to talk to you,” my son announced.
“You scheduled your operation four days before a five hour exam? I know you need this operation but can’t you postpone the exam?” I asked.
“No, I’d have to repeat the course.”
“Will they do anything to accommodate you?”
“I can put my feet up on a chair,” he replied. My son was thirty with a wife and two children, and this was his first semester in medical school. He’d quit his job and sold their house in Wisconsin. There was no turning back.
“I appreciate your coming, Mother. I hope you can do this,” he said grimly.
The next day my son and daughter-in-law left at 7:00 am. I strolled my grandchildren to my granddaughter’s preschool and picked her up at 11:00 am. I was confident.
“They haven’t been able to fit Sam into surgery yet,” my daughter-in-law said when she called. Delays happen. It was a new relatively simple laser surgery. He would return home at 3:00 pm the same day, but after several calls, it looked like they would be gone longer than expected.
I’d brought books and toys. We read. We played. I gave my granddaughter her birthday present. I put my grandson to bed for a nap. We took walks, and we watched movies. I made peanut butter sandwiches and warmed baby bottles.
“Your son is ready to be released, but we can’t find his wife,” the hospital called at 6:30 pm. Jill hadn’t run out on him. She’d gone to eat after waiting all day, but my grandchildren hadn’t seen me for months. I was a stranger, and they were getting cranky. I loaded them into a double stroller and took them outside for the forth time. It was dark. I became mildly confused. Which house was it?
My son and daughter-in-law had recently moved to New Jersey not far from my son’s medical school in Philadelphia, an old fashioned small town much cheaper than Philadelphia. The town houses were architecturally coordinated, individually owned duplexes with shared driveways, trees, gardens, and yards. The town was charming, but in the dark all the houses looked the same, and their new address slipped my mind.
At seven pm, my daughter-in-law drove by. “Are you lost? Sam is home. He’s fine. I have to pick up his medication,” she said. She took the baby. Reoriented I took my granddaughter home.
“Your Dad is home. You’ll see him soon,” I said. May was elated. She ran inside crawled into her father’s bed and threw up on him and the bed. Agile for post-surgery, my son changed the sheets and washed his hands and May’s hands--- a prime directive in medical school.
May threw up every two hours all night and the next day. The next day my daughter-in-law got the stomach flu, and then I got it. Each of us threw up every two hours. I don’t know about baby Ben. He didn’t throw up, but he woke up five times every night, and my bed was in his room. We took turns comforting Ben.
My son didn’t have time for stomach flu. Perhaps the antibiotics helped.
“Maybe we should cancel Thanksgiving dinner,” I said to my daughter-in-law.
“Oh no, it will be fine,” she replied.
“I’m going to the library to study. I can’t stand this chaos,” my son said.
“Good,” my daughter-in-law and I chorused. He’d been notably glum. His post operative care was a disappointment. At Thanksgiving with two babies, hovering over the patient was improbable even before the stomach flu. As he slumped in to make lunch, we tried not to trample him
“Aren’t you supposed to stop lifting after a hernia operation?” I asked my son as he picked up the baby.
“They don’t say that anymore, and I don’t have a choice,” he replied.
In 2006, my daughter worked at a museum in NYC. She was to arrive five days before Thanksgiving with my ex-husband, but there was a delay. In NYC my ex-husband had emergency angioplasty, a balloon inserted in a vein, and the stomach flu. My daughter couldn’t leave without him.
Back in New Jersey, we sped through parties, and my son took the exam finishing in four and a half hours. We toured the library, the farmer’s market, and the children’s museum. At the children’s museum, I raced for an hour through a child shrieking labyrinth stopping only for a second to envy the lounging python. Invoking glares as I grabbed at someone else’s blond three year old child. Both children cried when we left.
“It’s time to go, May,” my son said quietly.
“Just five more minutes, five more minutes,” May said as tears rolled down her face.
“OK, five more minutes,” my son said. I wasn’t consulted, and we’d left Jill for an hour of peaceful cleaning.
On the day before Thanksgiving, my son picked up his sister and their Dad at the Philadelphia Chinatown bus. Under stress, he failed to observe an auto as he pulled out of his parking space. Crash, boom, not tragedy, a minor scratch, no one was injured. They exchanged information without official intervention. The only addition to our Thanksgiving dinner was that the mother of the driver called my son three times on Thanksgiving Day. “Do you have insurance? Are you sure you have insurance?” she said.
“It was the other driver’s fault,” his Dad opined.
My son’s house was small, so his Dad was to sleep in a relative’s apartment thirty minutes away. They arrived at 9:00 pm. My ex-husband looked like an escapee from an institution. His shirttails were half-out, his collar askew. He was rumpled, dirty, and couldn’t sit straight.
“I don’t think you can drive him anywhere, and he looks bad,” I said.
“You’re right, Mom. I don’t want to drive. He’ll have to stay here,” my son said.
“You’ll sleep here tonight, Dad,” my son reported.
“Good,” my ex-husband replied, and he crawled upstairs into the only double bed. Everybody else scrunched together.
On the morning of Thanksgiving Day, we discovered May’s birthday cake was missing. My daughter-in-law left to find a cake.
May has friends, and the doorbell rang with tribute all day. Piles of toys scattered everywhere. She couldn’t unwrap all her presents in one day.
“I will make quite an impression in this,” my granddaughter said holding up a new dress.
“No food fights, Ben,” I said as my grandson hurled grapes and mash potatoes.
The law practice in Wisconsin was beginning to seem relaxing. Bedtime for me was 8:00 pm, and I was taking naps with my grandson.
The day before I left I decided to make a difference. Every sheet in the house was an emblem of the stomach flu, and the clothes had gone astray while we partied and company came and went. I searched for clothes and did seven loads of laundry.
As I folded the last batch, my son said, “Is that it, Mother? Did you do it all?”
“Possibly,” I replied.
“That’s what drives me crazy about you. That’s a yes or no answer,” he said.
How was Thanksgiving Dinner? What did we eat? Dinner was great. I’m traditional. Fill in the blanks.
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